Miami Life Insider’s Guide: Arts Festival, Hampton House, Dude Ranch, Bansky
Happy weekend Tomatoes. Coconut Grove Arts Festival is back for its 56th year. The festival has more than 360 juried artists and family-friendly activities. More than 120,000 people attend every year. The Historic Hampton House is one of Miami’s greatest gems even though many residents and tourists never heard of it. We recently spent a weekend on a dude ranch that’s only two and half hours from Miami. And Bansky is in town. There’s so much to do Miami. Here’s to sunsets and rainbows. (Photos: Eliot Hess)
Feb. 19-21. Coconut Grove Arts Festival
Every year I say I am not going to buy anything at the Coconut Grove Arts Festival, and every year I find art objects, and clothing accessories, I can’t live without. I know that sounds so silly, but the festival has so many items you can’t find anywhere else. And the exercise you get, walking from one end to the other, is a great workout. My most precious purchase was a handmade mesh batwing cape. I loved it so much that I kept buying more of them every year. Now I have a whole collection of these elegant fashionable accessories that are appropriate for all occasions.
Over the years my husband and I bought a few paintings, photographs, jewelry, and knickknacks. The real fun of the festival is walking around in the Florida sun, meeting the vendors, stopping for snacks and live music acts. I can’t wait to hunt for a few treasures a few weeks from now.
The Coconut Grove Arts Festival is entirely open-air, held outdoors along South Bayshore Drive, adjacent to Biscayne Bay in Coconut Grove. Proceeds from the Coconut Grove Arts Festival fund year-round arts programming and scholarships for local schools. It starts February 19th to 21st. 10 am to 7pm Saturday and Sunday. 10am to 5pm on Monday. Get tickets $20.
(Photos: Eliot Hess)
The Historic Hampton House
The Historic Hampton House is one of Miami’s greatest gems even though many residents and tourists never heard of it. Perhaps this story in The Three Tomatoes will change all that. The hotel became famous in the 1960’s because that was the place were big name Black entertainers were forced to stay. The hotels on the beach would not accept them. Guests included Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Robinson, Aretha Franklin, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., plus so many others who went there to get a peaceful night sleep. What a horrific time.
In fact, the movie “One Night In Miami, the 2020American drama film directed by Regina King (in her feature film directorial debut) all took place in the Hampton House. The film is a fictionalized account of a February 1964 meeting of Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke in a room at the Hampton House, celebrating Ali’s surprise title win over Sonny Liston.
Years later, Harry and Florence Markowitz, a white Jewish couple, opened the remodeled Hampton House as an upscale motel with a jazz club, swimming pool and late-night restaurant in the all-Black Brownsville neighborhood. Architect Robert Karl Frese designed the 50-room motel in the Miami Modern style, similar to that of Eden Roc and The Deauville on Miami Beach. After the $6 million restoration in 2015, thanks to the work of preservationist Dr. Enid Pinkney, the real-life Historic Hampton House became a nonprofit organization and cultural center. Today, guests can tour both Dr. King’s and Muhammad Ali’s suites, and rent public areas for private events.
A group of us, Gail Williams, Jayda Knight, Alex Nuñez, Eliot Hess, and yours truly, went to the Hampton House this week to help celebrate Ray Elman’s exhibition of 40 x 60 inch, mixed-media portraits of people who were patrons or performers at this amazing establishment. Ray, a good friend, is an extraordinary artist who is also the founding manager/editor of Inspicio, an arts publication platform sponsored by Florida International University’s College of Architecture + The Arts.
Elman has made over 200 paintings in this series of notable talents such as Norman Mailer, Robert Motherwell, Douglas Huebler, Justin Kaplan, Joel Meyerowitz, Annie Dillard, Mark Strand, Sebastian Junger, Alec Wilkinson, E.J. Kahn, Jr., Varujan Boghosian, Al Jaffee, Lee Falk, Elise Asher, Anne Bernays, and Ruth Reichl. His work is in several public and corporate collections around the world including the embassies of Madrid, Berlin, Tel Aviv, Brazilia, Brussels, and the Museum of African American HIstory, Proctor & Gamble, Fidelity Mutual Fund Group, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Alexander Grant.
Ray maintains a strong relationship with the Hampton House because of its rich culture. You can’t stop an accomplished artist from getting emotional about the soul of a place like this. The Hampton House has a loyal and best friend in Ray. It’s very heart warming. GET THE DETAILS.
(Photos: Eliot Hess)
Westgate River Ranch…the largest dude ranch East of the Mississippi
When my Miami friends asked me if I wanted to go to a dude ranch for the weekend two weeks ago, I said yes immediately but I was really freaking inside of me. What was a city girl like me going to do in the world of cowboys? I quickly found out we had a lot in common. We both like to work and play hard.
It all started out when friends Cris Sweeny and Claire Lardner invited six pals to join them, and their humungous RV, at a dude ranch called Westgate in River Ranch, Florida. It’s about an hour south of Orlando. It was a 2 1/2 hour drive from Miami. Cris and Claire, owners of Frameworks, live in Miami and go on road trips all the time. They invited us, (Gail Williams and Dawn McCall, Randy Bridges and Ron Moorman, and Eliot and yours truly) to this outing because the ranch had guest accommodations to suit our individual needs. As big as the RV was, we all couldn’t sleep there. Westgate has lodges, townhomes, teepees, tents, and a huge RV park. We spent most of the time hanging out in Claire and Cris’ RV, the general store, the saloon, the western store, the BBQ Smokehouse restaurant, and the rodeo.
The 1,700 acre Westgate River Ranch has horseback riding, swimming, golf, petting farm, nature hikes, trap and skeet shooting, hayrides, cookouts and a full-service marina complete with boating, fishing, and airboat and swamp buggy rides. It also features a 5,000-foot paved and lighted runway, the award-winning Smokehouse Grill, River Ranch Saloon and the longest-running Saturday night championship rodeo in the United States that offers trick riding, bull riding, calf roping and barrel racing at the 1,200-seat rodeo arena. A herd of grazing Watusi cattle (known for their long, distinctive horns) makes its home at Westgate River Ranch. Plus an 18-hole miniature golf course, rock climbing wall, zip line, mechanical bull, and a bungee jumper.
The River Ranch was originally built in the 1960s by Gulf American Corp. (GAC), then one of the largest land developers in the state, as the centerpiece of a huge, proposed development in the area called “River Ranch Acres.” It had several owners and in 2001, Westgate Resorts purchased River Ranch and Westgate River Ranch reopened its doors the following year. It has evolved into the largest dude ranch East of the Mississippi, is surrounded on all sides by approximately 400,000 acres of state and federally protected wetlands.
We all had an amazing time. If you want to experience something different, this is the place for you. GET THE DETAILS.
(Photos: Eliot Hess)
Will The Real Banksy Please Stand Up
It’s very strange to visit the artwork of an artist who everyone knows, but nobody knows. It’s pretty amazing that Banksy has been able to keep his identity a secret for so many years. We can all guess once again who this person is as we visit the return of a Banksy exhibit at Miami’s Ice Palace Studios.
My husband and I, along with two close friends, attended this exhibit the first time it came to Miami a few years ago. It was wonderful then and it’s wonderful now because you are free to make your own conclusions about the artist and his work without anyone challenging you.
That’s exactly what is supposed to take place when you see a new piece of art. No one stands at your side to feed you information. It’s all up to you to figure it out. That may be what Banksy is trying to accomplish. As a PR person, I am a little more suspicious. I believe his/her anonymity is a ploy to gain attention.
Nevertheless, the latest exhibition boasts more than 140 pieces on display. Each piece can stir a conversation with your friends. That’s why some of the works are so expensive. The lucky people of Miami get to see the collection IRL, (in real life). There is original art, prints on different kinds of materials, photos, and sculptures. Tickets are $26.20 for adults and $17.60 for children.
(Photos by Eliot Hess)
The tomato behind The Three Tomatoes.
Cheryl Benton, aka the “head tomato” is founder and publisher of The Three Tomatoes, a digital lifestyle magazine for “women who aren’t kids”. Having lived and worked for many years in New York City, the land of size zero twenty-somethings, she was truly starting to feel like an invisible woman. She created The Three Tomatoes just for the fun of it as the antidote for invisibility and sent it to 60 friends. Today she has thousands of friends and is chief cheerleader for smart, savvy women who want to live their lives fully at every age and every stage. She is the author of the novel, "Can You See Us Now?" and co-author of a humorous books of quips, "Martini Wisdom." Because she's lived a long time, her full bio won't fit here. If you want the "blah, blah, blah", read more. www.thethreetomatoes.com/about-the-head-tomato
